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The six Tory candidates – Boris plus five others – vying to become the party’s nominee to take on Labour’s Ken Livingstone for London mayor have been revealed on Conservative Home here.

Last week, we asked the question, who should be the Lib Dem nominee – which provoked a lively comment thread, with suggestions ranging from the possible, to the desirable, to the far-fetched.

This week, the question is, what’s the timetable for selecting the Lib Dems’ mayoral candidate? The election takes place in May 2008, in 10 months’ time. To the best of my knowledge, the vacancy of Lib Dem mayoral candidate has yet to be advertised. When will it be?

Not that I buy Daniel Finkelstein’s rather smug, and typically anti-Lib Dem, line – that Ming Campbell has been left with egg on his face by not signing up to David Cameron’s daft suggestion that Greg Dyke should run on a joint Lib Dem/Tory anti-Ken ticket.

The Tory commentariat and blogosphere may have erupted in orgiastic rapture at the prospect of Boris as the Tories’ mayoral candidate. But one doesn’t have to subscribe to Polly Toynbee’s hyper-adjectival rant against ‘Mr Blond Ambition’ to regard Boris as a big risk for the Tories.

Even if he can negotiate the next 10 months without dropping a clanger which cannot easily be laughed off, the real nightmare for the Tories might be if Boris were to win…